"How much do you want this time, Will?"
"Want?" There was an anguished protest in the man's cry.
"Need, then." The voice was softer.
The minister's face dropped back in his hands, and after a moment the words came out between his tight fingers, hardly to be heard.
"Five hundred dollars, Sympathy."
I thought there was a gasp from the corner, suppressed. I caught the sound of a drawer pulled open and the vague rustling of skirts as the woman moved about. Her voice was as even as death itself.
"Here it is, Will. It brings us to the end, Will. God knows where it will come from next time."
"It—it—you mean—" An indefinable horror ran though the minister's voice, and I could see the cords shining on the hands which gripped the chair-arms. "Next time—next year—" His eyes were fixed on the child at his feet. "God knows where it will come from. Perhaps—before another time—something will happen. Dear little Hope—little girl!"
The child's eyes turned with a preoccupied wonder as the man's hand touched her hair; then went back to the alluring pattern of the matches.
Sympathy Gibbs spoke once more.